Bill Would Ban Discrimination Against Jobless in Hiring

[Dulcinea]

Efforts to expose the practice of excluding job applicants from consideration based solely on their being unemployed got a major boost yesterday. Representatives Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Hank Johnson of Georgia introduced the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives -- legislation that would ban discrimination against unemployed workers in hiring and help end the perverse catch-22 that requires workers to have jobs in order to get jobs.

The new legislation coincides with the release of a new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) showing that employers and staffing firms continue to expressly deny job opportunities to job-seekers who are unemployed. The report documents numerous recent online job postings specifying that job-seekers "must be currently employed."

The results of new polling, included in the report, show that 90 percent of the public believes these exclusionary practices are unfair. And, by a 2-to-1 margin, nearly two-thirds support federal legislation to prohibit this kind of discrimination in hiring.

This is blatantly unfair at best and discriminatory at worst!

http://unemployedworkers.org/sites/unemployedworkers/index.php/site/blog_entry/bill_would_ban_discrimination_against_unemployed_in_hiring

[HughBeaumont]

1. Good first step. Can we combat ageism as well?

[Loge23]

2. Good point!

Each - being unemployed and one's age - should be protected under the equal employment act.
Basically, this is another class warfare situation where labor is not only marginalized by corporate interests, but the same corporate interests are picking and choosing who they deem to be worthy of a job.

[tallahasseedem]

6. +1

If you are past the age of 50, kiss your chances of getting a new job goodbye.

[onehandle]

3. Yes. I can see the House of Boehner/Cantor/Ryan pass this.

Not.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. The idea of companies refusing to hire people whom are UNEMPLOYED simply is

not logical.

:crazy:

I'll certainly grant that there are some people out there whom may be UNEMPLOYABLE because of a serious personal problem (i.e. untreated drug/alcohol addiction, serious mental disorders, etc.) but there are plenty of people out there whom are currently unemployed through no fault of their own. I mean, if a business does an mass layoff of 10K people, does that mean that they all now deserve to lose the ABILITY to apply for new employment for which they are qualified? :shrug:

:wtf:

[jimmyflint]

7. + 1 I don't get it.

It just doesn't make any sense to exclude people just because they are currently unemployed. As if employers didn't already have enough excuses for not hiring somebody.

[Igel]

10. I can think of some reasons.

If you've been unemployed for 2 years, what have happened to your IT skills? Your management skills? Can you produce or read a spreadsheet as well as you could when you were accounts manager 2 years back?

Have you stayed up with software? With management styles? Have you gotten undisciplined?

I'm on the market as a teacher. I was talking to somebody who said it's the same with PhDs: You hang in there a few years, you keep applying, and eventually you get a job. It's false: My wife got a job 5 years post-PhD because she had a post-doc and kept her credentials bright and shiny. If she'd laid off the discipline for 5 years she'd be 5 years obsolete in a field where two years can be a game changer. Same with teaching: If I did something for a couple of years and went back my classroom management skills would be crap, I might not know the current standards, etc. Old skills are often rusty or obsolete.

How about work references? I cringe to give mine--I've freelanced for years and they don't want a client that I've done business with by FedEx and email, with a phone call here or there. No, they want a *supervisor* or *coworker*. So I list some from a decade ago. Are their characterizations of what I'm like still valid? Still punctual? Able to adapt and learn new things? But if I've been unemployed for a year or two the same problem would still hold. If I'm employed, after I give my resignation my new employer can call and double-check on me.

Or how's this: I *was* employed untl last week when I got fired for embezzling. I've had the job for two years, so I put down that I've been unemployed for two years. Quick: You can't do a credit check, how do you find out if I've been fired or quit my last job? Perhaps I was in prison for assaulting my last boss' wife. Do you as an employer want to know this minor detail?

And, finally, let's consider two applications. The first, from Joe in IT, currently working but looking for something better, has applied. The second is from Beth, who did mathematical modeling for an engineering design firm but was fired a year ago, still she has tolerable IT chops, esp. since she took a community college class. Now, I may think Beth is just being desperate and as soon as things turn around she's going to quit and go back to her much more lucrative modeling gig. She's unemployed now. I can use unemployment as a factor to screen out people who are career-hopping out of desperation. If I swell the candidate pool with such I'm going to be interviewing people for no good reason--or hire somebody who, after training and coming up to speed, quits as soon as she can.

I can think of others but they're even less charitable.



In the end it's just a way of shrinking the candidate pool and making it more manageable. They can do the exact same thing the hard way--interview more--although it might well be less efficient and more costly. They might weed out stellar candidates; the odds are that they'll make it easier to find the stellar candidate.

I don't like the practice. That doesn't mean I can't understand it.

[jimmyflint]

13. Thanks, it never even crossed my mind.

I never even thought that some skills may be perishable, or some people may attempt to be deceptive about past employment. I guess right now employers have the luxury to discriminate as they wish.

[Dulcinea]

18. The jobless shouldn't be counted out just because they're unemployed.

I see what you mean about having fresh skills, & that's certainly an employer's prerogative. But it's wrong to screen people out just on the basis of employment status.

[Dulcinea]

5. kick for the jobless. eom

[Fire1]

8. Good move! K&R

[lunatica]

9. May it pass with flying colors!

[TheKentuckian]

11. Now this is something worth while and the correct thing to do.

Probably can't pass now but keep hammering away and screaming bloody murder and one day it can pass.

Always be attacking, never accept hanging out on the opposition's side of the field and punting. Dictate whether on offense or defense. Always apply pressure. Make them be more active to increase the odds of mistakes.

Anyone paying attention for more than a few years should grasp that the TeaPubliKlans never fear pushing too far or worry about blow back even when a shit storm is obviously going to hit full force because they know if they are relentless and never concede that their chance will come along with a slow but seemingly sure shift of the dialog toward their position, no matter how reviled and laughed at first offer.

The ideology that cares about notches on the gunbelt more than actually doing the hard work of pushing the boulder to the mountaintop. The "if the votes aren't there there is no need for a conversation or a fight" mentality is a fucking long term loser. Incremental means actually moving toward the goal and eroding the opposition not meekly folding the tents and spending your energy trying to be indiscernible from the other side until a "perfect storm" can be put together or by magic going along with the current will get you where you want to be despite your destination being way the hell in the other direction.

I applaud these Reps for doing something important for the people.

If it can't make it now, I know one day we shall overcome as long as we never quit and never lose track of who we are and where we want to be.

[donheld]

12. It's disgusting that we even need a bill like that

We do need it, but you'd think we'd be a better society than that, but we aren't

[Cereal Kyller]

17. Yes, and stupid.

I sincerely hope those companies lose their best employees because of this braindead policy.

[21st Century FDR]

14. Can't wait to hear the teabaggers excuse for voting this down.

"Well, goddamn it, you can't go around telling the Job Creators (who haven't created a single American job in the 21st century) that they have to hire someone who actually NEEDS a job. That's SOCIALISM!!11!!"

[ck4829]

15. Time to put a pair of scissors to the vicious circle. K&R.

[saras]

16. So what? Now they'll require current experience in their field. Unemployed? No current experience.

[treestar]

19. Good. It makes no sense anyway.

And neither does ageism.